a place in which 23 magical technology-type things are explored and written about

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Lifelong learning: some thoughts

I think the desire to learn, and learn throughout your life, is ingrained within us all. (With the exception of an adult student I met once, who proudly announced to me that "She wasn't a learner anymore!". That could mean many things.) Learning is something that happens every day, and most of the time, we're not aware of it. It's when we make the conscious choice to learn something new (and often big and scary) that it starts to intimidate us - the planning! the effort! the time! Of the 7.5 successful habits of lifelong learners, I believe the easiest for me to wrap my brain around is #2 - Accept responsibility for your own learning. I've been an online student now for about a year and a half, and while the thought of self-pacing might be uncomfortable to some, I'm apparently okay at it. You get used to it. The hardest thing for me to do is definitely #3 - View problems as challenges. Problems tend to be big crises to me. I think that's a weakness in attitude that I can fix, though.